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I UBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 



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i UNJTED STATES OF AlVSERiCA. 



HARD TIMES AND THEIR REMEDY. 



ADDRESS 



BY 







{ad fiiei ani i\m |eisi|. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 







AT MeFARLAND'S GROVE, 



NEAR NEWPORT, DELAWARE, 



AT A HARVEST HOME FESTIVAL, 



IN AID OF THE 



NEWPORT M. E. CHURCH. 



r-^ 



Thursday, August 29, 1878. 



" To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land. 
And read their history in a nation's eyes." 




WILMINGTON : 

JAMES & WEBB, PRINTERS. 
1878. 



HARD TIMES. 



At the Harvest Home, near Newport, on August 29th, 1878, Senator 
Bayard delivered, by invitation, an address on " The Present Depression 
in our Country; Its Cause and Remedy." Mr. Bayard spoke as follows : 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Neighbors : The object of this 
assembly is to co-operate in aid of a religious society to assist in the pay- 
ment of the cost pf a building dedicated to the worship of Almighty God. 
And the subject which I have been asked to discuss before you is not incon- 
sistent, for it involves, very importantly, our daily duties as citizens, and 
this, too, in a government in which the sovereign power is lodged in the 
majority of the people under a system of suffrage almost universal. Duty 
to God and duty to one's neighbor are inseparable, and constant attention 
and an intelligent interest in public affairs is the essential duty of every 
American citizen. 

The subject which has been selected for me is vast and important. It 
cannot be stated or discussed in a single breath. It must be viewed from 
many standpoints, and in the end any definition will be found incomplete, 
and any remedy must be found rather in general principles than in limited 
and specific acts. 

The present depressed condition of property and business 

IN OUR country, and THE PROPER REMEDIES TO RESTORE HOPEFULNESS 
AND PROSPERITY TO OUR PEOPLE. 

I need scarcely say to you that upon such a topic it would be most un- 
worthy and unbefitting for any man to approach it in the feeling of a par- 
tisan, especially on an occasion like this. Therefore, I shall treat this sub- 
ject as a citizen, without the least intention to bestow praise or blame in 
any direction, and that the name of neither of the political parties into 
which this country has been divided shall even have mention by my lips. 
It is so clear and plain that the evils of bad government, or the benefits 
and blessings of good government, cannot be restricted to any class or 
party, or section of our country. I only wish to state the truth as I see it, 
and lay down, as far as my experience and opportunities permit, a pathway 
back to prosperity and happiness for all our people. 



Under the force of modern inventions of steam and telegraphic com- 
munication, the great family of nations all over the world are drawn closer 
and closer together and becoming almost daily more and more mutually 
affected by the condition of each. In other words, the prosperity and wel- 
fare of any one of the nations of the world is becoming more and more 
dependent upon the prosperity and welfare of every other. It is a short- 
sighted view that would suppose any permanent advantage can come to 
any one nation through the misfortunes or losses of another. It is true that 
a vast war in Europe takes from the people of the country where it occurs 
their useful labor and converts it into destruction instead of production. So 
that we, here, at peace, find better markets temporarily, for those commo- 
dities which the industries of our people have produced, but, in the end, 
the gain is not permanent. So much of value has been taken out of the 
world by war and waste and, finally, is to be subtracted from the sum total, 
in which all are concerned. 

There is distress and depression all over the continent of Europe, and 
among those nations with whom we are most intimately connected by our 
commerce and in our exchanges. I attribute much of this present depres- 
sion to the cost and excitement attendant upon war and preparations for 
war, upon the maintenance of vast military establishments which drain the 
resources of rhese countries, and weigh their populations down with heavy 
debts. All this is visible in Germany, in Russia, in Austria, in England, 
in France; or, if France be possibly an exception, (which I doubt,) the 
reason must be found in the peculiar industrial ingenuity and close econo- 
mies of her people as well as in the steady wisdom displayed in the man- 
agement of her finances. 

In our own land there are additional causes appertaining only to our- 
selves. There is a law of natural philosophy by which reaction will inevita- 
bly succeed perturbation ; and, in the moral world as in the physical, the 
pendulum of excitement will swing back upon the opposite side just so far 
as originally disturbed from the centre. 

The wild and terrific excitement which convulsed this whole land from 
centre to circumference, the dreadful sanguinary and costly war which 
raged from 1861 to 1865, would, of itself, in the nature of things, have 
been succeeded in the ordinary course of events by an era of reaction and 
depression. And, moreover, this was not a foreign war. There was no 
indemnity to be gained such as Germany extorted from France, no acqui- 
sition of new provinces, but it was between sections of our own country. 
A war in which every victory was won from our own people, so that in a 
pecuniary sense there was, in victory or defeat, the same inevitable results 
of loss of money, loss of labor, men, and property. Let me read you a few 



words from the financial history of the war, by Mr. Spaulding, written in 
1869. 

He had been chairman of the sub-Committee of Ways and Means of 
the House of Representatives during the war, 

"The withdrawal of such a large number of youthful laboring men, 
" into a vast army of unproductive labor and the mistake made in the over- 
issue of paper currency so inflated prices as to materially increase the ex" 
" penses of the war. * * » The demand for money was wholly 
" unprecedente(f ; nothing ever recorded in history equaled this demand, 
" and it reached to such overwhelming amounts that the careful observer 
" must look back with amazement that the Government was able to pass 
*' through such a crisis. 

" The authorization of a loan of $900,000,000 in one act, and an in- 
" crease of the public debt in one year, of over $940,000,000, over and 
"above customs, duties and internal taxes, are matters of history. The 
"amount of the issue of paper currency and temporary obligations was 
"almost appalling. Considerably over 1,000,000 of men were at one 
"period of the war withdrawn from productive labor. * * * The 
"history of the human race shows no such consumption and waste in any 
"war during a single year. $1,153,891,136.61 expended in one year." 

These are the words of a thoughtful and patriotic man ; and let me here 
say that this is but an incomplete and fragmentary statement of our loss as 
a people. Mr. Spaulding writes of the United States government alone, 
from which nearly one-half of the States of the Union were at that time 
excluded, and their history of outlays, losses and desolation is far beyond 
that which is here written by him, and yet, remember, they are to-day 
sharers in the common inheritance with us and we with them. There was 
the enormous public debt of about $2,800,000,000. A sum that staggers 
the mind to compute, and which seems almost beyond ordinary compre- 
hension. 

There was also as one of the results of the war a duty thrown upon us, 
a pension list, generous and large. I have spoken, also, of the desolation 
of that section of the country which was the theatre of war — of whose 
losses we have nothing more than vague approximation, but their suffering 
was infinitely greater than was ever known in the North. There was vio- 
lent and thorough disorganization of their labor and social systems, which 
brought ruin upon those responsible for the debts based upon that class of 
proprietorship. Then, on both sides— with all this, there came wild expen- 
ditures, extravagance — not merely of individuals, but in the expendi- 
tures of the Government itself. A habit of dealing with large sums in a 
reckless way. In other words, an utter loss of the sense of values, and 



6 

the man who loses the sense of relative values is a most unsafe guardian 
of the public treasury. 

Then there has grown up a vast body of civil officials, appointed under 
a system which cannot bear examination — a civil service which, of itself, 
threatens almost the permanence and success of republican institutions. 
The idea that the public offices of the country were established for the ben- 
efit of the persons who fill them, is wholly wrong. The office is instituted 
for the public service ; it is not for the benefit of the man who holds it ; it 
is for the benefit of the people whose laws created it, and whose service is to be 
performed. The good and faithful servant of the public is entitled to be se- 
cured and maintained on the same principles, precisely, as the good and 
and faithful servant of a private employer. The man who does his duty in 
public office owes nothing to the public. He has rendered them back 
quid pro quo. He has given them that which they were entitled to, and 
they have paid him no more than justly was his right. But when office has 
been, as we see and know, dependent not upon the excellence of the man- 
ner in which its duties were performed, but is made a reward for mere 
partisan exertions, sometimes services which would not bear close examina- 
tion, and when the holder of the office depends upon the pleasure of the 
appointing power or the whim and caprice of the party to which he must 
look for maintenance in his place, you may be assured that his duties will 
not be the first and chief point of his consideration. But rather that his 
time will be spent in contriving how little he may do for the post, and how 
he may best continue in the enjoyment of his official emoluments. 

An intelligent Englishman, holding a high station in his country's 
government, in discussing this question not long ago, told me he would be 
perfectly willing to undertake the conduct of our departmental business, 
conducting what may be called the entire clerical business of the great 
departments of our government, with one-third the number of our present 
officials, provided he could procure the same class that were employed by 
his government at home, men who had been trained for the work, and who 
knew if they did their duty they need 'hbt fear being displaced, but would 
find a long life of public service met at the end with pension, reward, di- 
minished labor and public thanks. Surely there is much to instruct us in 
this, for I hold it to be well that we should gather wisdom whence we may, 
and not believe that freedom under our republican institutions means abso- 
lution from the laws of human experience and common sense. There is no 
magic in the name "Republic;" and there is nothing in a popular form 
of government that can save people any more from the result of bad man- 
agement than under a monarchy, an oligarchy or any other form of less 
restricted power. 

I have been one of your representatives at Washington for some years 



past. I can well attest the great pressure there is for official appointment, 
and the evil, it strikes me, is not in the fact of the salaries being too high. 
On the contrary, I think, for the character of the service demanded, they 
are, in many instances, less than they ought to be. It is to the superfluous 
number of persons employed, and their precarious tenure that we owe our 
imperfect system which has led to such enormous expense. 

I next class among causes of our depression, the unwise system of our 
tariff duties upon imported merchandise. These have been placed so 
high, in many cases, that they have stimulated an excessive competition at 
home which prevents us now from competing with other nations in foreign 
markets. Let me be understood. If a man is compelled to pay a high 
tax at the port of entry upon materials which enter into the article which 
he manufactures, it is plain that the manufactured article must cost just that 
much more. Now, when he has manufactured and seeks to export it, it 
goes abroad, costing him not merely the value of the material and the cost 
of manufacture, but also the tax which he paid at the port of entry, and he 
enters the foreign market saddled with this extra cost and cannot compete 
with men who have not that tax to pay. Therefore it is we have, in the first 
place, stimulated more men to, enter a trade that it was advisable should 
enter it. If you have a son whom you wish to embark in business and you 
come to a town like Wilmington, or Newport, or any other place, a certain 
trade, profession or occupation is suggested, and some thoughtful friend 
says to you " That is all very well, but that business is overdone." If he 
wants to be a physician, your friend says the town is full of doctors ; if he 
wishes to be a lawyer, he tells you we are overstocked with lawyers. If he 
wishes to keep a grocery store, the question will be. How many men are 
already engaged in that? Because common sense tells you there must be 
a variety and distribution of industries ; we cannot all follow one pursuit 
without creating a surplus in our production or having a supply in excess of 
the demand, the result of which is loss to all concerned. It is just so with 
the effect of unhealthy stimulation in any branch of industry. When you 
force it by unwholesome legislation to such a condition that too many rash 
in, not only does loss follow at home, but when a man goes abroad with his 
goods and seeks to compete in other countries, he finds himself so weighed 
down with this very tariff duty that he cannot compete at all, and day by 
day competition is growing closer and closer. People learn each others' 
wants by mail and telegraph and supply them by steamship and railroad. 
' And every day we are compelled, if we would be successful, to study out, 
carefully, the means by which we can most cheaply supply each others' 
needs. 

Another fact. We live in an era of labor gaving inventions in which 
machinery, operated by steam or other power, is taking the place of simple 



manual labor in almost every department of productive industry, to a 
greater or less extent. I will not dwell upon the great problem of the 
effect upon human happiness of these wonderful changes. Like almost 
every other great movements in the world's history, such progress is always 
accompanied with loss and suffering to some, although, ultimately, bene- 
ficial to all. In no land has labor-saving machinery been more rapidly 
adopted and perfected than in the United States. Especially has this been 
marked in the domain of agriculture, in which our inventors scarcely find 
competition. It was a known fact that, at the exposition of Vienna in 
1874, the only competitors for improved agricultural machinery were Ameri- 
cans. Every steam-plow, threshing machine, mower or reaper that 
entered the Austrian soil in the eyes of Europe, had sprung from an Ameri- 
can hand guided by an American brain. It is easy to see that, with im- 
proved agricultural machinery, three men can to-day fully do the work 
formerly requiring twelve. We have, in this way, immensely cheapened 
many articles of common use and brought within the reach of the masses 
comfort and luxuries a few years ago attainable only by the more wealthy. 
Now it is a fact that our manufacturing capacity is largely in excess of our 
present markets and the home demand. It has been stated, and I believe 
with approximate accuracy, that we have a 'manufacturing capacity in tliis 
country for one hundred millions of people, and we know we have not 
more than forty or forty-five millions of people. What is to becom.e of the 
extra supply for'the sixty millions ? Where are the sixty million purchasers 
for this excessive production ? We must find new markets or we must 
reduce our manufacturing power. No one, I think, will be willing to 
accept the latter alternative, and pending this state of things comes a period 
of distress. It is an interregnum, a standstill, during which the vast forces 
of society are seeking to adjust themselves to the new order of things. 
This man dismissed from agricultural labor, rather the nine men who find 
that the three remaining can do all the work of the former twelve, must 
find something else to do. I believe there are sewing machines in this 
country that enable a skillful man to sew as many as nine hundred pairs of 
shoes in a day. What is to become of the number of men who were toil- 
fully occupied in making even a tithe of that number some years ago ? 
They must have employment to earn a living, and pending the time when 
society is adjusting itself to this new order of things,it seems to me inevita- 
ble that there must be distress somewhere ; it is the inevitable result. Only 
let those who suffer for the moment feel that there is a silver lining to the 
cloud, that the day will break and they will find in increased comfort and 
luxury, means for other occupation that shall advance them in all the arts 
of a civilized, and the comforts of a reasonable, life. 

We must set the current of labor flowing, and employment must be 
found for it. What will do that ? That is one of the questions which you 



have asked me to consider to-day. I believe that a judicious reduction of 
tariff duties on all raw materials needed by our manufacturers, and which 
would enable them to place their goods in foreign markets at lower rates, 
would be an immediate relief. Oh, friends and neighbors, do not forget 
that there are two sides to every bargain ; that in all humpn dealings and 
exchanges there must be a spirit of reciprocity ; that if you wish to sell to 
a man you must buy from that man or help him to sell that which he has. 
Do not look at your own side of the bargain alone ; whether of yourself as 
an individual or in considering the welfare of your country in which you 
have your stake, remember that you must give as well as take. If we 
would sell our products to foreign nations we must take from them materials 
which they produce and which we do not. 

The other day I saw in the Public Ledger of Philadelphia a statement 
of an agent who had been sent by Philadelphia manufacturers and mer- 
chants to South America to see whether he could not open up an avenue 
of trade and exchange between Philadelphia and South America. He 
wrote from ^''alparaiso, where he found a man actively engaged in con- 
structing railroads and operating them in conjunction with his mines of 
copper and other ores. This man said he wanted a number of steam 
locomotives ; that he preferred American locomotives to the English, and 
that they were better ; but, said he, I have not the money to pay, but I 
will give you commodities. If, therefore you will let me pay you with a 
fair equivalent in copper ores I will take half a dozen locomotives. The 
answer was, what can we get for copper ores in Philadelphia ? They were 
met right at the port of entry with such a tax that no American could 
undertake to pay it and sell his copper at a remunerative rate. The con- 
sequence was they could not take his ore ; the man had the ore and would 
sell it, but the American could not buy it ; the laws of his country pre- 
vented him from bringing that ore to this conntry, and so it went to Eng- 
land, where there was no duty on it, and they smelted it. Certain it is that 
these locomotives which would have employed a large number of skillful 
workmen, which would have given a reward both to capital and labor, were 
denied to Philadelphia. Therefore, 1 think it is time for our people to 
take a broad view ; a just view, my friends ; an essential view of this 
important subject. 

Another cause of depression is to be found in the enormous outlay in 
extended lines of railroads built, in advance of any trade, possibly, to sup- 
port them, through regions of country scantily populated, which has given 
rise to wild speculations of almost every character and which have neces- 
sarily come down with a crash, burying bonds and stockholders in utter 
ruin and throwing large bodies of laboring men out of employment. The 
paralysis so sadly visible in our iron furnaces and rolling mills, can be 
reasonably accounted for from this cause alone. 



10 

There is another matter I consider more important than all, and which, 
more than any other single cause, creates and continues the present stag- 
nation and depression in enterprise, in the employment of labor and, of 
course, in the employment of capital — / mean the uncertain and disordered 
condition of our money. " The money of a country," as Mr. Calhoun once 
said, and was quoted approvingly by Mr. Webster, "is the life blood of the 
political body." 

In the first year of the war, those who had charge of the government, 
to use the language of Mr. Spaulding, the historian, made •' material 
departures from sound political economy." They resorted to the issue of 
treasury notes by the government, which although upon their f<;ce were 
payable on demand, yet actually were, and still are, not payable at all — 
Irredeemable. That currency was not real money ; it had no value in 
itself, nor did it represent anything that had pecuniary value ; no com- 
commodity of any kind was represented- by these Treasury notes ; they had 
back of them, simply, the honor and credit of our government. They were 
issued in reckless abundance, and although made a compulsory tender for 
all debts, rapidly depreciated to nearly one-third their face value, and in 
order to keep them up even to that value were, for some time, according to 
the printed terms, made convertible into the coin interest-bearing bonds of 
the Government. That was the case of the first notes called greenbacks that 
were issued. " This note is a legal tender for all debts public and private, 
except duties on imports and interest on the public debt, and it is exchange- 
able for United States 6 per cent, bonds redeemable at the pleasure of the 
United States after five years. ^'' That was on the loth of March, 1862, when 
the first of these notes was issued, but on the ist of July 1863, the right to 
convert these notes into bonds was repealed. . In 1864 the amount of such 
notes " issued and to be issued," that is to say the amount then outstand- 
ing and such as might thereafter be issued, was limited at four hundred 
million dollars. In December, 1865, the House of Representatives voted to 
reduce and pay for these notes, and I want, for one moment, to show you 
the true history of this matter which the people seem, now-a-days, wholly 
to have forgotten in their distress and in looking for a remedy which I 
know to be delusive and unreal. 

On the 4th of December, 1865, Mr. McCuUoch, Secretary of the 
Treasury, in his report, says : 

"That the legal tender acts were war measures passed in a great 
" emergency ; that they should be regarded only as temporary ; that they 
" ought not to remain in force a day longer than would be necessary to 
" enable the people to prepare for a return to the gold standard, and that 
" the work of retiring the notes which have been issued should be com- 
" menced without delay and persistently continued until all are retired." 



11 

On December i8th following, 14 days after that time, the House of 
Representatives passed the following: 

" Resolved, That this House cordially concurs in the views of the 
" Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the necessity of a contraction of 
" the currency with a view to early resumption of specie payments, as the 
" business interests of the country will permit ; and we hereby pledge 
** co-operative action to this end as speedily as possible." 

One hundred and forty-four men voted for that resolution and but six 
voted against it. I cite this to show you the Viistory of these things. I can- 
not draw your attention to anything more important, and what was truth 
then is truth to-day. The laws of health do not change because men 
become sick — indeed it is then they must be most carefully consulted and 
obeyed. 

And this policy continued. On the 12th of March, 1866, both houses 
of Congress, by overwhelming majorities, passed the following resolution : 

"That of U. S. notes not more than $10,000,000 should be retired 
"and canceled within six months from the passage of the act, and there- 
" after not more than $4,000,000 should be retired in any one month." 

That went on till January, 1868. At that time Mr. McCuUoch's plan 
was indorsed by both parties, overwhelmingly. It retired and cancelled 
$44,000,000 of these notes, so that we had $356,000,000 demand notes to 
pay, and no more. In 1872, under some pressure or other, under the ad- 
ministration of the Treasury by Mr. Boutwell, $5,000,000 of these notes 
were reissued, but so strong was the feeling at that time that the act was un- 
warranted, that the notes were recalled into the Treasury before Congress 
met, and when Congress met, the Committee of Finance, upon which I 
have been assigned for duty since 1 was a member of that body, agreed that 
the re-issue of these notes was without warrant of law, and so reported to the 
Senate. 

But in 1873 a great crash came. The system of credit — the over-blown 
system of confidence — the system that had stimulated men to believe that 
the great primeval decree that men should eat bread by the sweat of their 
face, was in some way repealed, and that people could grow rich without 
labor, and Congress could ordain that people should be prosperous and 
happy without following natural laws. I need not tell you the history of the 
wretchedness and misery that ensued. You remember the terrible failure 
of Jay Cook & Co., of Philadelphia. You know the failures that followed 
all over this land from that time until now. I have seen the list of credi- 
tors of bankrupt bankers which I think no humane and feeling man could 



12 

read unless he read them through his tears. The hard-earned savings of a 
whole life time of honest toil, the little sum that some frugal working woman, 
that some pains taking wife had gathered up to protect her children, was 
swept away. It will be alwavs the necessary consequence of the disregard 
of those laws in regard to property which are beyond human repeal and 
which human contrivance never can expect to evade. And yet it seems the 
people are now invited to renew such scenes — by renewing the systems of 
finance which caused them. But in 1873, under that state of things, Mr. 
Richardson, then Secretary of the Treasury, suffered $28,000,000 of these 
demand notes, which had been retired and canceled by law, to go back into 
circulation, which, under a certain permissive act ot Congress was allowed, 
thus bringing the volume of legal tender notes from $356,000,000 to $384,- 
000,000. Under the operations of the law passed in February, 1875, com- 
monly called "The Resumption Law,'' thirty-six million dollars of these 
notes have been retired, but as they were retired, upwards of forty million dol- 
lars of national bank notes were put out in their place, so that to-day the 
amount of outstanding demand notes of the Treasury is about $347,000,000. 

The act of 1875, commonly called "The Resumption Act," provided 
that all these notes should be redeemed and paid in coin at the Treasury o n 
presentation on and after January ist, 1879. Under this belief, with the 
very prosperous condition of our crops and foreign exports, and with the 
confidence that there was honesty and good sense in the American people, 
and that there would be an execution of ^11 these ideas of American 
finance, which no one would have disputed until a few years ago, the 
premium upon gold has faded to almost nothing. There is scarcely a 
brokerage between it and the demand notes of the United States, and silver 
is even less valuable than Treasury notes.. That is to say, that at the 
present time, 412)^ grains of silver, nine-tenths fine, can be purchased for 
90 cents or less in Treasury notes, and in that ratio for larger sums. I do 
not mean that the coined dollar of 412)^ grains can be purchased for that 
sum, because the Government of the United States has wisely reserved to 
itself the privilege and profit to turn 88 cents worth of silver into 100 cents 
in coin, and say it shall be received for that amount. But that does not 
change the value of that which composes this piece of money. Coin has a 
legal value and a market value, and no government on earth can establish a 
market value. The consent of the mercantile world is necessary to establish 
a market value. However, you may say that resumption is almost practi- 
cally accomplished because the equivalent between the promise to pay and 
actual payment is almost reached, or is promised to be actually reached if 
we will but stand fast but a very little longer. 

And in considering what are the causes of our present distress, let me 
comment on what is not a cause, although so loudly proclaimed to be. We 
hear and read, daily, the allegation that the volume of the currency has been 



13 

contracted, and that "contraction" is the cause of men's present poverty. 
That there is actually a scarcity of these notes, less than the reasonable de- 
mands of business require. I cannot imagine how, in face of the facts, 
such a charge can be gravely made. If any man will los)k at any news- 
paper of to-day, or of the past three years, containing the quotations of the 
money markets in any of the money centres of the Union, he will find the 
rates of interest running somewhere about 3, 4 and 5 per cent, per annum. 
Can that be because there is a scarcity of money ? or does it not show that 
there is not a scarcity, but a plethora ? that if some men at least had not so 
many notes they would demand more for the use of them ? You can bor- 
row at low rates in all these cities, upon undoubted security, because there 
is more money lying idle than there is demand for in business. I do not 
speak of men who have no credit; that is another question. Print or coin 
all the money you please ; ordain what rate of interest you will, how is a 
man to get money unless he has something to give in exchange for it ? or 
unless he works for it, or gives security for its return ? Some persons 
seem actually to believe that we can make every poor man rich by setting 
printing presses in motion, or stamping base money. If a man would have 
money he must have property or service to give in exchange for it, or be 
able to give satisfactory security if he would borrow it. 

But the tables of the Treasury will show you, so far from the fund for 
circulation having been lessened since the passage of the Resumption act, it 
has actually been increased. - 

Thus, United States Treasury notes, national bank notes, coin and coin 
certificates amounted, on January ist, 1875 to $805,465,084, and on May 
1st, 1878, amounted to $825,849,931, an increase of over $20,000,000. 
Therefore, I am amazed when I hear the cry that the contraction in the vol- 
ume of the currency is the cause of our present business depression, because 
there has been no such contraction. I cannot understand how men can so 
mislead themselves, as well as others. The only contraction took place 
under Secretery McCuUoch's policy, so warmly indorsed by Congress, be- 
tween 1866 and 1868 ; then it was arrested by speculators and men who had 
embarked wildly in the purchase of property on speculation fixed at war 
prices, buying at rates which were unreasonably high, and fixed in a paper 
money greatly depreciated and not redeemable. Can they be maintained ? 
Permanently — no ; the writ of a man cannot do it. Temporarily — perhaps ; 
infuse into the American people the sanguine spirit of speculation, the wild 
excitement that has been witnessed by many of you ; give them to believe 
that prosperity is coming in some imaginary shape or form, and that their 
lands will be worth double their present prices, and their crops three times as 
much as they are now, and they will trade in accordance with their hopes — 
their dreams. You and I have lived long enough to remember such eras of 
wild speculation. 



14 

I can remember when a piece of mulberry tree that a man would now 
cut out of his pasture field and throw on his manure heap would have 
brought him several dollars. That was the morns inulticaulis mania. It 
was one of the p*iodical manias to which the human mind is always subject, 
which the thirst and hunger for gain will occasionally give rise to, and I re- 
member many of my old friends, in Wilmington, filling their grounds with 
these plants which were presently to be cut down and used as pea sticks, 
and yet they were considered valuable for the time. And you see that even 
in the midst of their strange hallucinations and imaginings the moms mul 
ticaulis was even then simply a mulberry plant, and nothing more. Instead 
of bearing the gold they looked for in its branches, it was simply the tree 
which nature had designed it. It might be made a tree of hopes, but the 
end appointed came just as certainly as any, in which man sets out in oppo- 
sition to the laws of nature. 

I say I am amazed to hear the cry of contraction, because the Treasury 
has in circulation more money by $20,000,000 than there was before the 
Resumption bill became a law, and the circulation is increasing every day, 
because the Government is buying bullion and rapidly converting it into 
silver money at the rate of $3,000,000 or $4,000,000 per month, so that 
there must have been a very considerable addition since the passage. of the 
silver rcmonetization act. 

But there was another cause for our present distress. It was the in- 
credible policy pursued from 1869 to 1874 in relation to our bonded debt by 
those in charge of the Treasury. 

There are men of business around me who necessarily have obligations 
and have studied wise and sensible methods of meeting them. Now, when 
a man has a number of debts not due and a number that are due, which does 
he pay first ? In common sense, whether as dealing for others or for him- 
self, what would be sound management and wise finance? Why, credit is 
the soul of business. Credit is the poor and honest man's best shield. It 
gives to him something that enables him to compete with mere capital, and 
every man who wishes to prosper will know that he must always guard his 
credit. Now, what is credit? It is to pay when you have promised to pay ; 
to pay the note that is due to-day and not the one due next year ; to meet 
your demands as you are called upon, according to your contract. This is 
common sense, common honesty ; it is so plain and manifest a duty 
that I don't see how any one can be found to deny it, and yet it was wholly 
utterly disregarded, and the incredible fact stands manifest that, with this 
enormous debt out-standing in a loan, with twenty years to pay it at the 
shortest, it pleased those in charge of the finances of the country to force 
these bonds to the highest possible price in the market and then buy them in 



15 

at the highest premium they could pay. It made vast profits for somebody, 
but it exhausted the country at the very period when all its resources most 
needed husbanding. You know that to-day there is great distress. In dis- 
tress, men will look for anything to find fault with. There are men to-day 
who only seek a pretext, however shallow, to get rid of our just public obli- 
gation, but the man who values his private credit should stand by the credit 
of his country, for where is private credit when the public credit is gone ? 
The payment of these bonds not due was unwise; it seemed to me financial 
madness, but a law was passed early in March, 1869, called " An Act to 
Strengthen Public Credit." I do not doubt that it was, by most of those 
who voted for it, well designed — there is something in strengthening public 
credit that sounds well, and appeals strongly to public favor — but see what 
it did. It undertook to settle by a legislative declaration the question 
whether the bonds of the United States were payable in paper or coin, and 
the law of March, 1869, said they should be paid in coin. Now I am not 
discussing the question whether the law before that time made the bonds 
payable in coin or no, but I do know, in the platforms of the new parties 
now organizing, that this law of 1869 is assailed, and its repeal demanded. 
Now what made such a law necessary ? Nothing t]iat I can conceive of, for I 
tell you that if one-fourth part of the money that was paid out of the public 
Treasury in purchasing bonds not due, at ?. large premium, had only been 
expended in bringing our demard notes to par and restoring specie payment, 
there would not have been a question as to what our bonds were to be paid in. 
For whether paper or gold would matter not if the demand note of our Govern- 
ment was as good as gold — and convertible into it at the will of the holder. 
From 1869 to 1873 over $500,000,000 of gold was sold by the Secretary of 
the Treasury and the proceeds expended in buying in at a high premium 
bonds not due, and not a farthing was spent in paying the demand notes, 
and thereby bringing them to par with coin, as easily could have been 
done. 

When an edifice is tottering, what part do you prop? The sides ? the 
roof? or that upon which both side and roof depend for safety ? You se- 
cure the foundation. So that I say in this case there was, to my judgment, 
the wildest and most disastrous error. I will grant there was patriotic feel- 
ing ; the best intent. Whatever the wrong may have been it is not for me 
to discuss that now ; it is the way out of it, and the remedy I propose now 
to discuss, and in which we all have the deepest interest. I look upon the 
disregard of the plain, simple business principles of finance and common 
sense in the pre-payment of a debt not due at a vast premium, which ought 
not to have been paid between 1869 and 1873, and see in it the greatest 
cause of distress. But admitting all this distress and deploring it deeply, I 
cannot consent to the question whether we are to obey the laws constitu- 
tionally enacted. And, yet we find American citizens declaring in public 



16 

resolutions that acts of the Government are not binding upon them because 
they did not concur at the time of their passage in their becoming laws. 
No government of laws can stand upon such a doctrine. Every man must 
feel that he is as much bound to obey the law which he has done his best 
to oppose the enactment of, as the law he had done his best to procure. 

But you know there is a very large number of American citizens, especially 
in the Western States, who are demanding that the volume of legal-tender 
greenback notes shall be enlarged. The extent of the enlargement they do 
not agree about. Some unhesitatingly declare it shall be unlimited ; it 
shall be large enough to pay off the whole national debt in greenbacks ta 
the amount of hundreds of millions of money. There are others, again, 
who see that such rank dishonesty is nothing less than open repudiation 
and national discredit, who do not say that, but say "we will have the 
greenback volume enlarged so as to absorb the entire volume of the na- 
tional currency and replace it;" that we shall proceed to forfeit the charter 
of the national banks all over the country, wind up their affairs and replace 
their currency by greenbacks equal to the amount of bank notes ;" and 
others state their claims at an amount "justly demanded by the business 
interests of the people " — whatever that may be. Something about as 
vague as that ; something, as, we say, " about the size of a piece of chalk. '*" 
The most moderate who speak on this subject certainly demand that all the 
national bank notes shall be retired and their place supplied by greenbacks 
under the guise of becoming the measure of the currency. Of course, the 
want of constitutional power in Congress to make anything but gold and 
silver, legal tender as money, will arise, and to many minds as to mine 
will be conclusive. 

I will not discuss with you many objections to that course upon the 
mere score of economy. There is one, however, worth your consideration. 
By law and constitutional precedent any instrumentality of the Govern- 
ment of the United States is not taxable by the States. Therefore, the 
notes of the United States Government are not subject to any tax, and who- 
ever holds these notes holds property that cannot be forced to contribute in 
any way to the public burdens. Now, I am one of those who believe that 
government was instituted for the protection of persons and property; and 
that each man owes to government allegiance and support in return for the 
protection he receives ; and the reason why we pay taxes is that we are ren- 
dering back our share of what we owe for the protection our Government. 
It seems to me that all property should bear a proportionate share of these- 
expenses. It is right that when our men capable of arms bearing may be 
called forth to battle, that the property they fight to protect ought to pay 
some of the expenses of sending them' out. For that reason it is plain to 
me that it was not wise in 1870 to exempt our national bonds then provided 



17 

for from Federal taxation, becaus6 I held that the Government had the 
right to call upon every species of property to bear part of its obligations. 
My amendment, however, offered in the Senate, received but few votes. 
And yet, to-day, there is no stronger cause of prejudice against those who 
hold the Government bonds than the fact that they hold an untaxed and 
untaxable property. They are held up as men exempt from the burdens 
that holders of all other property are required to pay. And to that I have 
but one answer to make ; they took their property under the public law 
ar^d back of that law stands the public honor to protect them. It never 
wa-s my fortune to hold one of these bonds, but that does not make me less 
sensible of what is essential to the continuance of a government of laws. 
But, my fiiends, remember that this conversion into greenbacks of national 
bank notes, which are not a legal tender and are taxable in the hands of 
any holder, by state as well as federal authority — taxed very heavily, so far 
as can be judged by the reports of bank officers, and I see banks in New 
York giving up one-third of their capital to rid themselves of a taxation 
too onerous — remember, by such conversion you exempt a new class ot 
property from all share in the public burdens. \ye are in debt, and have 
got to pay it or be disgraced ; and I will not admit there is any alternative 
to the \merican people on that subject. Now, we must study rules of 
economy to do this, and the best way is to make all the property in the 
country that we can, contribute fairly and equitably towards it. Now, the 
conversion of national bank notes into greenbacks is the conversion of tax- 
able into untaxable property. 

It is argued by many that it is impossible for the Treasury of the 
United States to resume specie payment on the ist of January next. The 
Secretary of the Treasury says he can do so ; I am not here to say whether 
he can or not. I think he is in a post of great responsibility and I am dis- 
posed to aid him. He in not there by my voice, but he is now the custo- 
dian of your Treasury, and mine, and it is madness, and folly, for us to 
undertake to act in a manner hostile, unfair or hurtful to his efforts to serve 
us. "But," say our friends in the West, "we are in favor of specie pay- 
ments. We admit the people must have an honest yard stick, an honest 
measure of values, but we do not want it too soon, we cannot have it just 
now; it must come from natural causes; the country must grow into it." 
Now, if we cannot resume specie payment upon $35.0,000,000 of notes how 
can we upon $700,000,000 ? So, I must say that the man who tells me that 
he is in favor of doubling the volume of the demand notes of the United 
States, and in the same breath that he is in favor of early resumption of 
specie payment, bewilders me — if he does not intend indefinitely to post- 
pone resumption I must wonder at his credulity or I must do worse — suspect 
his honesty — I prefer to take the first course, because, in this matter, no 
man who considers the vast and varied matters of human government but 

' 2 



18 

will feel the strongest disinclination ever to impute bad motives to those 
who differ with him. It is a dark business, at best ; I do not know that 
we always understand our own motives ; I am very sure that, with the best, 
we are oftentimes mistaken ; and so, it seems to me that in considering 
such a subject there ought to be the widest, kindest respect shown to all 
honest differences of opinion. 

The proposition to double this volume of Treasury notes is an in- 
definite postponement of specie payment, and it also entrusts to the Con- 
gress of the United States— to an accidental majority — the control of the 
volume, and, of course, the value of the money, the medium of exchange 
in all our bargains and contracts. An old and frequent saying is that "the 
world is governed too much," but I do not think in all the schemes of 
paternal government, of which we have heard so much in Europe, that 
anything quite so far-reaching and controlling ever was imagined as such a 
power in a majority of Congress. Every man's contracts, every man's bar- 
gains, every man's sales would be subject to the will of the majority of Con- 
gress. Are you ready for that ? Do you believe that that is the proper rule ? 
or, is it not self interest that should control your contracts and agreements ? 
This is a country governed by parties ; sometimes one being successful, 
sometimes another. Sometimes men go in upon the heels of an election, 
promising prosperity to certain classes, and the volume of currency and its 
value is to depend upon the ebb and flow of political power. There is no 
stability in that; nothing an American can approve of. The great strength 
of this country is that it permits men to exercise their powers freely, accord- 
ing to the measure God has given them. There is no bar of rank, sect, 
party or prejudice ; it is the non-interference of the Government that per- 
mits the citizen to rely upon himself, restricted only by general laws to pro- 
tect society. Heaven help us if the time shall come when the value of 
every man's farm and every contract he makes is to be determined by some 
accidental majority in Congress that may change every two years. The 
The doctrine is so disastrous, so fatal to sound credit and prosperity that all 
who have read history or studied finance see nothing but the ruin and 
prostration of all public and private credit and confidence between man and 
man. At the bottom of all human dealings lie certain simple principles 
implanted there by the Author of our being. One of these is truth — 
nothing that is not based upon truth can long subsist, and honesty is but 
one form of truth. The reason why gold and silver are accepted among 
men as a standard of value is not merely because of their attributes, their 
indestructibility, their durability, but because these metals truthfully rep- 
resent so much human labor expended in obtaining them, and are worth so 
much as commodities, because it costs so much to procure them. If gold 
and silver shall be adulterated they are no longer true, but are false. But 
if unadulterated they constitute value in themselves, are exchangeable for 
all other values and are honest equivalents. 



19 

Paper money is a form of credit most useful and desirable when it keeps 
its promise and procures the value it represents when presented in payment. 

When it is secured and made convertible into value at the will of the 
holder, no currency is so convenient or practicable. It is then an honest credit 
money. What is credit ? credo, I believe ; credit, he believes. The man 
who gives you credit, trusts you. It means faith, it means confidence ; and, 
if the promise is never to be performed according to its terms, what then ? 
Can any one here tell me the difference, in such a case, between a counter- 
feit and the original, when neither is ever to be paid ? Let me read you 
here something on this subject. It is as to the issue of paper money by gov- 
ernment — and was written by a very thoughtful and intelligent man, Mr. 
Charles Moran. 

"Government paper money, instead of representing existing results of 
labor ready to redeem the paper money on demand of the holders, only rep- 
resents property and lives consumed or destroyed and labor unproductively 
employed. 

" How can such paper issues long perform the functions of money when 
even metallic money cannot perform them unless constantly redeemed with 
the useful results of labor and with useful services. 

""Government paper money is a conclusive proof of impoverished and 
embarassed finances, and every subsequent issue is an evidence of increasing 
embarassment and poverty. 

" The holders have no power to enforce payment by legal measures. 
No individual can enforce the most sacred claim against a Government. 

"The amount and times of the issue cannot be regulated by the wants 
of the community, but solely by the necessities of the Government. 

" In one word, Government paper money offers none of the guarantees 
and attributes of a successful medium of exchange, and its issue should never 
be permitted by any people that have a voice in their government, and any 
regard for their own interest and well-being. There is not, I believe, a 
single example on record of the power of creating money out of cheap mate- 
rials having been exercised by a sovereign state for any length of time, or 
through any season of public difficulty without having been abused." 

Now it is proposed by those to whom I have referred, to abolish money 
of valvie and not resume its use at all, but to issue paper certificates of the 
Treasury, which are to be called " absolute" money, that is, absolutely never 
to be paid at all ; and that is the sort of talk as set up in the interest of the 
laboring man as opposed to the capitalist. How sickening and base does it 
seem to be in this country to hear these cries raised of class against class of 



20 

our citizens. What is capital? The accumulation of the results of labor. 
What created capital ? Labor and nothing but labor. What makes pros- 
perity ? Labor and capital conjoined with enterprise. What is the soul of 
enterprise ? Hopefulness, confidence in its reward. Idle capital means idle 
labor, and idle labor means idle capital ; the two must work together, and 
when they are separated, both must languish and suffer. No man is fit to 
be called a statesman who proposes a law that is in the interest of either 
capital or labor alone. In' the very nature of things it cannot be ; for they 
are rationally inseparable. 

It is the duty of every man of us to stand firmly in opposition to these 
wild, unmeaning cries, however we may feel for the distress that causes them 
especially in the manufacturing centres, in the large cities to which, ever 
since the war, population has been unhappily streaming from the country. 
We do live in sad and troublous times, and we must live through them like 
honest men. On shipboard, when the storm is raging, and hope seems 
almost dead, the cry is often heard, "Break open the spirit room," but the 
true captain will have a' firm guard at the door to keep the men back to 
save his ship and save the lives of the wild and foolish creatures who invoked 
their own destruction. 

We have only to stand in the van courageously and the day will break, 
and we will come through our present trouble. The Good Book tells us, 
" Remove not the ancient landqiarks which thy fathers have set," and, in 
the name of our fathers, of Washington, of Hamilton, of Jefferson, of Mad- 
ison, of Webster, of Jackson, and of Calhoun, I ask that the ancient land- 
mark of an honest money be not removed. Let me read you something 
from one of Daniel Webster's speeches : , 

" Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of 
" attempting a detestable fraud on the community ; a double fraud ; a fraud 
^'' which is to cheat men out of their property and out of the earnings of their 
" labor by first cheating them out of their understandings. 

"'The natural hatred of the poor to the rich.' Sir, it shall not 
"be till the last moment of my existence; it shall only be when I am 
" drawn to the verge of oblivion, when I shall cease to have respect or affec- 
" tion for anything on earth, that I will believe the people of the United 
" States capable of being effectually deluded, cajoled and driven about in 
" herds by such abominable frauds as this. If they shall sink to that point, 
" if they so far cease to be men as to yield to such pretences and such clamor 
" they will be slaves already ; slaves to their own passions, slaves to the 
" fraud and knavery of pretended friends. 

" ' The natural hatred of the poor against the rich.' * The danger of a 
"moneyed aristocracy.' Sir, I admonish the people against the object of 



21 

" cries like these. I admonish every intelligent laborer in the country to be 
" on his guard against such delusions. I tell him the attempt is to play off 
" his passions against his interests, and to prevail on him in the name of lib- 
" erty to destroy all the fruits of liberty, in the name of patriotism to injure 
" and afflict his country, in the name of his own independence to destroy 
" that very independence, and make him a beggar and a slave. 

'•' Has he a dollar ? He is advised to do that which will destroy half its 
" value. Has he ha:ids to labor? Let him rather fold them and sit still, 
" than be pushed on by fraud and artifice to support measures which will 
** render his labor. useless and hopeless. 

" Sir, the very man of all others who has the deepest interest in a sound 
"currency, who suffers most by mischievous legislation in money matters is 
" the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil. A depreciated cur- 
•''rency, sudden changes of prices, paper money falling between morning 
" and noon, and falling still lower between noon and night — these things 
" constitute the very harvest time of speculators, and of the whole race of 
" those who are at once idle and crafty, and of that other race, too, the 
" Catalines of all times, marked, so as to be known forever, by one stroke of 
" the historian's pen, " those greedy of other men's property and prodigal of 
'^'^ their own. 

[Oh ! gentlemen ! are there not some who answer that description in 
this country, and in our midst at this day ?] 

*' Capitalists, too, may outlive such times; they may either prey on the 
"earnings of labor, by their cent, per cent., or they may hoard. But the 
" laboring man, what can he hoard? Preying on nobody, he becomes the 
"prey of all. His property is in hands. His reliance, his fund, his pro- 
" ductive freehold, his all, is his labor. Whether he work on his own small 
" capital or another's, his living is still earned by his industry; and when 
" the money of the country becomes depreciated and debased, whether it be 
" adulterated coin or paper without credit, that industry is robbed of its re- 
" ward. He then labors for a country whose laws cheat him out of his 
" bread. 

"I would say to every owner of every quarter section of land in the 
" West, I would say to every man in the East who follows his own plow, and 
" to every mechanic, artisan, and laborer in every city in the country, I 
"would say to every man, everywhere, who wishes by honest means to gain 
" an honest living, 'Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.' Whoever at- 
" tempts, under whatever popular cy, to shake the stability of the public 
"currency, bring on distress in money matters and drive the country into 
" the use of paper money, stabs your interest and your happiness to the 
" heart." 



22 

Daniel Webster was a farmer's son whose early life was passed in a poverty 
that few who hear me to-day, ever have been forced to undergo. I have 
read within the last year, the account which fell from his own lips, as pre- 
served by Peter Harvey ; how he sat down to that which could scarcely be 
called food, and lived a life of hardship and penury, hardly known to the 
poorest man in this State. He was one of the greatest products of Amer- 
ican institutions, and he never forgot that the great cry of duty to him came 
from the united voice of his country, and not from any class or section. 

But this disorder in our affairs is curable. With us in Delaware, among 
the most important of our industrial pursuits is shipbuilding. In 1854 a 
great revolution was commenced in the world of commerce, by the substi- 
tution of iron for wood in shipbuilding. With wood abundant here, and 
our iron but little developed, we did not catch the idea in time to prevent 
Great Britain from out-stripping us, but iron has now become the great 
shipbuilding material, and a shipbuilding establishment is a vast and com- 
plicated undertaking not to be started in a day. Therefore, for a time, we 
were at a great disadvantage, created in a large measure, by unwise legisla- 
tion ; but as the currency has grown stronger, the confidence of our cap- 
italists has grown stronger, and with skilled workmen, with railroads devel- 
oping our iron and coal mines, shipbuilding is increasing. We have work- 
men full of intelligence and capacity ; we have labor-saving machinery far 
better than the nations of Europe ; and of materials, we have the best in 
abundance from the hand of nature. 

We have a very large interest in carriage building again affected by the 
general depression. Our former excellent ijiarket in the Southern states has 
suffered from the evil consequences of the war,and since the war, an unwise 
and unjust policy has paralyzed their industries, and our fellow citizens in 
that section have been in so impoverished a condition that they could net 
buy from us, but that, thank God, is passing away, and as they accumulate 
means, they are becoming the good customers they were of yore. 

Our country contains everything needful for the happiness and prosper- 
ity of our people ; our resources are abundant, almost beyond comparison 
with other lands, our form of government permits the freest exercise by each 
man of his faculties. All then we have to do is, to study and develop our 
resources. We have capacities for production, scarcely known. The other 
day I was struck with an item that may seem small, stating that we imported 
from Europe of Osier willows for basket making, to the extent of $5,000,000. 
Why, I put it to all of you living here in New Castle county, whether we 
cannot grow enough to supply the whole of this demand upon our own 
creeks and water courses, upon lands now unproductive ? and yet this is but 
a single illustration of neglected resources that require no labor worth speak- 



23 

ing of, a large source of revenue that is thrown away. Our competition with 
other nations is close, and growing closer ; we must buckle down to our 
work, and neglect nothing. We have honest weights and measures fixed 
bylaw; let us insist upon the restoration of the great measure of 
MEASURES, AN HONEST MONEY. This I Consider the prime essential for 
the restoration of that certainty and confidence, which will revive enterprise 
and with it prosperity. 

The period of the war of 1776 is often spoken of as " the time which 
tried men's souls," but we are living now in times which test our capacities for 
self-government more than any we have passed through. There are evils 
which affect our prosperity more than war ; war comes openly, and we know 
how to meet it ; b"jt an insidious, debased coin, or a redundant currency, 
raises fallacious hopes, and leaves burdensome debts and crushing taxation. 
Let me read to you an extract from an English historian, of events nearly 
200 years ago, in 1695. It is Macauley who writes: 

" The evils produced by this state of the currency were not such as have 
generally been thought worthy to occupy a prominent place in history. 
Yet it may well be doubted, whether all the misery which had been inflicted 
on the English nation, in a quarter of a century by bad kings, bad ministers, 
bad parliaments and bad judges, was equal to the misery caused in a single 
year, by bad crowns and bad shillings. Those events which furnish the 
best themes for pathetic or indignant eloquence, are not always those which 
most affect the happiness of the great body of the people. 

" The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had 
not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and prosper- 
ously on. While the honor and independence of the State were sold to a 
foreign power, while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws 
were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest and industrious fam- 
ilies, laborers and traders, ate their meals and lay down to rest in comfort 
arid security. Whether Whigs or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were upper- 
most, the grazier drove his beasts to market, the grocer weighed out his 
currants, the draper measured out his broad cloth, the hum of buyers and 
sellers was as loud as ever in the towns, the harvest home was celebrated as 
joyously as ever in the hamlets, the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire, 
the apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire, the piles of crockery 
glowed in the furnaces of the Trent, and the barrows of coal rolled fast 
along the timber railways of theTyne. But when the great instrument of 
exchange became thoroughly deianged, all trade, all industry, were smitten 
as with a palsy. The evil was felt daily atid hourly in almost every place, 
and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by the 
anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the 



24 

mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter 
there was wrangling from morning till night. The workman and his em- 
ployer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round. On a fair 
day or a market day the clamors, the reproaches, the taunts, the curses were 
incessant ; and it was well if no booth was overturned and no head broken. 
No merchant would contract to deliver goods without making some stipula- 
tion about the quality of the coin in which he was to be paid. Even men 
of business were often bewildered by the confusion into which all pecuniary 
transactions were thrown. The simple and careless were pillaged without 
mercy by extortioners whose demands grew even more rapidly than the 
money shrank." 

What is the remedy ? Retrenchment, economy, civil service and 
tariff reforms I have spoken of, and I class the restoration of a stable stand- 
ard of value as the prime and chief essential. But for all these we must 
come back to the people themselves. They are the source of all political 
power, and if the fountain is muddy the stream will not be clear ; if the 
people are weak, ignorant, dishonest, we must expect them to choose rulers 
like unto themselves. 

Ignorance and dishonesty lose none of their force by being massed ; it 
is rather increased. Where shall we, in our quiet little Delaware, seek 
our best remedy for our share of present trouble ? Most of you live in the 
country ; you have planted and cultivated trees ; sometimes you have seen 
them languishing ; you see the effects in the twig or in the leaf, but you 
know the cause lies at the root. Under the ground you seek the germ of 
evil ; the cut worm, the insect, or vermin, or the unfit nature of the soil. 
It is so in our daily lives, in the government of our people. A nation is 
but an aggregation of individuals. A community of virtuous families will 
be safe and happy no matter what their form of government. A fireside 
circle where honesty is the test and example — affirmative and self-asserting 
honesty — will extend itself through the morals and conduct of all the 
agencies of government. And who are the guardians of homes ? I turn 
to you, mothers, daughters and sisteis ; your domain is there. The 
earliest lessons of infancy and childhood are the controlling lessons of our 
lives. It is in the tender years that the mind and body are most easily 
shaped. It is the formative period of human lives for weal or woe, and the 
mothers of a people have a power, a responsibility over the character and 
tone of the nation that no merely human laws can give, and of it none can 
deprive them. We men of this day and generation must stand by our hon- 
est convictions regardless of the passing gusts of boisterous and passionate 
popularity, for it is not these which will waft our ship to port in safety, but 
rather the calm and steady trade winds of integrity and self-control will 
surely bear us to the haven of prosperity and happiness. 



